If you look at last year’s thread everybody is mad about Wemby being 47th and in retrospect it was probably too low.

Of their core four players (Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley, Darius Garland and Jarrett Allen), only Allen didn’t miss at 25 or more regular season games. So assuming they’re healthier

This kind of projection fails to look at how games actually played out when these guys missed time. For example, they went 14-4 without Mobley and Garland, which far outpaced their record with them in the lineup or when all 4 were together. They were a 56 win pace team without Garland and a 45 win team pace with him.

I think the 2016 and 2019 seasons really hurt the reputation of the regular season in the NBA.

2016 because the Warriors tried super hard, set an all time record, and ended up losing the Finals in embarrassing fashion and their season is treated as a failure.

2019 because the Raptors championship really reinforced the idea of load managing and rest as a smart and winning strategy.

Take those two together and you have these examples of there being something of an inverted correlation between putting maximum effort in the regular season and playoff success. Playoff success is weighted so much more heavily when it comes affecting reputation, money, and fame. Even if you could flip a switch now to make teams maximize effort in the regular season, the reputation hit extended to the media and fans as well, who are now prone to discount regular season results.

Absent any outside intervention, I think if regular season success became more consistently predictive of playoff success, like the way it was for Boston this year, it would make those games feel more meaningful.